Definition
Emerging Market Unpredictability is the principle that the applications and size of markets for Disruptive Technology are inherently unknown and unknowable at the time of development. Because these technologies enable new value networks, traditional market research and analytical tools—which depend on historical data and existing customers—are systematically misleading.
Why It Matters
You cannot analyze a market that doesn’t exist yet, and traditional research in disruptive spaces is almost always a path to failure. Success requires “epistemological humility”—conserving your resources for the inevitable pivot rather than betting everything on a “strategy” that is really just an unverified guess.
Core Concepts
- Expert Forecasts are Always Wrong: History shows that even the best market researchers (e.g., Disk/Trend) consistently fail to predict the volume and timing of disruptive market emergence.
- Co-Discovery: Suppliers and customers must discover the market together through trial and error. The “market” is not something to be found, but something to be created.
- Asymmetric Risk: The risk in disruptive innovation is not the technology (which is often simple), but the market application.
- The Intel Case: Intel had no explicit strategy for the microprocessor; they sold it to whoever would buy, and only realized its potential as a dominant product line through the “natural selection” of their internal resource allocation system.